Letchie Welton looked queer and rode back to the placers where he found Bob Leadley. ‘Your kid’s just brought in a man-killer from the Cup Q--a gray rat-tail I remember seein’ over there. If I was you, Bob, I’d put a bullet in the head of that cayuse, and I’d leave off work and do it now--before he kicks a hole out of Bart’s face or eats his scalp off.’ Letchie Welton went on to recall further details of Rat-tail’s reputation--of the fits he threw, the men he had maimed. Bob left the placer and went to his own little corral where he found Rat-tail unsaddled, Bart leaning in the fence shadow, looking over his new possession. ‘I hear he’s an outlaw, Bart. I wouldn’t ride him if I was you.’ ‘I rode him over from the Cup Q all right.’ ‘I know. He may have been glad to get away from there--but look at him!’ Bob took a few steps closer to the old gray head which suddenly looked deformed. A float of baleful red appeared back of the near, filmy eye. ‘I’ve seen that look once or twice before, Bart, and I’ll have to tell you to stay off him.’ ‘All he knew from the Cup Q was rakin’ and quirtin’, Dad.’ ‘But that ain’t the look of a nice hoss.’ ‘I like him.’ ‘It ain’t the look of a broke hoss, Bart.’ ‘I don’t want no broke hoss.’ ‘You’ll have to stay off, that’s all--’ Bob saw that deep questioning look in the eyes slowly turned his way--no anger, no hate, but separateness, a widening gulf. ‘At least, stay off him till I try him out for a few days.’ Bob was sincere in his attempt to make the rat-tail safe for his son, but the toughest saddle-sessions he had ever known, followed in the next ten days. Where the ordinary outlaw left off with sun-fish and rail-fence, the old gray opened fresh spontaneities. One of the last things he did with Bob forked, was to make a quarter-mile sprint toward a low-hanging cottonwood limb, the idea being to rake off his tormentor, which he carried out. Another time when Bob persisted several seconds longer than usual, the rat-tail came out of a buckling snap--to fling himself on the ground. The day came when Bob Leadley, cool-eyed, a smile on his lips, would have preferred to stand up and be shot at, than mount the gray monster again, but that’s what he did, it being his code. That day Rat-tail plunged into a dobe wall and left Bart’s father on the inside of a crowded chicken yard with a broken leg. ‘I should have done what Letchie told me, Bart,’ Bob said that night. ‘He ain’t a man-killer just; he’s a man-eater. You’ll have to leave him alone from now on.’ ‘You tried hookin’ him, the way they did over in the Cup Q. It makes him crazy. He ain’t crazy natural, his mouth’s tender. He’s been driven crazy. He needs humorin’, Dad.’ Anger flamed up in the father. He had been a horse-hand all his life. ‘I say keep off him, from now on.’